Server issues

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This doesn’t affect this particular site at all, but in case Dad or Kirsten check in, there seem to be issues with the djwudi.com/hanscomfamily.com/geekmuffin.com/interalia.org server at the moment. Phil and I are trying to work on it and find out what the issue is — whatever it is, it popped up sometime during the night, when neither he nor I were doing anything with the machine. No current ETA on when we’ll be back up and running, though we’re trying to bring it back up as soon as possible.

Update: Still down, still no ETA, and I need to get out of the house for a bit. I’ll get more info up when I can.

This also means that any e-mail sent to my [\@michaelhanscom.com]{.citation cites=”michaelhanscom.com”} address will not get to me at the moment. Please use one of my other e-mail addresses if you have one of them and need to get ahold of me.

Just so I don’t lose track or forget about what we tried so far, a quick copy-and-paste of the work so far:

Phil: el problemo, senor

Michael: what’s up?

Phil: i think something has run awry in my crontab
Phil: and is chewing up way too many resources
Phil: on the webserver.

Michael: aah, is that what’s going on
Michael: i just had to restart it – it wasn’t responding to anything when I woke up, except pings

Phil: i suspect you’ll find tons of sa-learn processes

Michael: no ssh or httpd calls would answer
Michael: is it down again now?

Phil: i got ssh to work verrrrrry slowly.
Phil: No responses again now.

Michael: hrm
Michael: well, yeah, something’s borked – the UI is frozen
Michael: gonna restart it again

Phil: gah.
Phil: let me know when you restart it, i’ll ssh in and nuke my crontab before anything launches.

Michael: k
Michael: okay, login window is up
Michael: give it a shot

Phil: i’m in
Phil: gonna watch top and see what launches.

Michael: :nods

Phil: other than a lot of sendmail and procmail processes, nothing seems to be wigging out.

Michael: took out whatever it was that was having an issue? or it just doesn’t seem to be “issuing” right now?

Phil: i took out what i -think- was causing it. no idea if that was it or not.
Phil: but i recall something similar happening last time i tried to make a cron job for sa-learn.

Michael: okay
Michael: what’s sa-learn?

Phil: SpamAssassin’s Bayesian filter learning tool.
Phil: It’s the “learn this now, dammit” tool.

Michael: ah, okay

Phil: i’m still getting some false negatives that it should’ve caught.
Phil: um.
Phil: i don’t think that was it. i’m not getting any responses on ssh again.

Michael: yeah – the UI’s frozen again
Michael: wierd

Phil: goddamnit. what is going on?
Phil: i know i haven’t actually changed anything…

Michael: maybe it’s the machine? (though I hate to suggest that)
Michael: restarting again

Phil: well, we’ll see; i sincerely hope that’s not it.

Michael: you and me both
Michael: (and kirsten and dad too, I’d bet)

Phil: is it acting funny? fans any louder than usual?

Michael: doesn’t seem to be
Michael: i just sits in the corner and hums happily to itself (shrugs)
Michael: as opposed to Marvin, who sits in the corner and hums dismally to himself

Phil: no, i’d wager something is getting overloaded.
Phil: i don’t know what, though. hmmmm.

Michael: could I be getting hit by an attack of some sort, I wonder?

Phil: hmmm.

Michael: god_damn_ that thing takes a while to start up…lol

Phil: there’s a way to test that.

Michael: it’d have to be a pretty good attack to completely lock it up, though

Phil: during the brief time i can get on i’ll try to install snort.

Michael: it’s up

Phil: can’t get it to respond to ssh even now.

Michael: huh

Phil: n/m
Phil: there we go

Michael: okay

Phil: sshd probably wasn’t up yet

Michael: i’m logged in, have top -u 15 running in a term window

Phil: should see a wget process.

Michael: if it locks up, hopefully it’ll give me an idea of what the issue might be (maybe)

Phil: hopefully.

Michael: right now it’s mostly just top at the top of top (whee)
Michael: i’ve seen ssh, gzip, and tar pop up occasionally, but the drop right back down again

Phil: those were me.

Michael: i’ve got my eye on you, young man…lol
Michael: imapd just hit thetop – bouncing between 10 and 25%

Phil: probably mail trying to connect.

Michael: and…freeze
Michael: dammit
Michael: the last thing at the top was just imapd at only 10%

Phil: yeah, i noticed. hmm.
Phil: i’m going to nuke my entire crontab. nothing should be launching, but that doesn’t mean nothing is.

Michael: i’m pretty sure mine’s empty…very sure, in fact
Michael: okies, restarting

Phil: and /etc/crontab just has system stuff in it.

Michael: back up

Phil: yep. i’m in.
Phil: ah HA
Phil: apache2 is starting.

Michael: ?
Michael: i was about to run a permissions check/repair, just for grins and giggles…
Michael: oh, wait

Phil: if you still want to, go for it

Michael: apache2?
Michael: didn’t you kill that?

Phil: yes.
Phil: precisely my point. i thought i did too.

Michael: hmm
Michael: i wonder why it’s starting…and why it hasn’t been a problem until now
Michael: wow

Phil: OK, I need to go find the startup item for apache2 and slay it.

Michael: it’s fixing a lot of permissions

Phil: oh man, wait
Phil: that was NOT a good idea.

Michael: uhoh

Phil: any custom permissions I had set on my website are gonna be borked

Michael: oh shit

Phil: well, we’ll find out soon enough.

Michael: it seemed to be doing a lot in the /System/Library/Perl/ directory
Michael: trying to stop it now
Michael: spinning rainbow cursor at the moment

Phil: frozen again
Phil: from CL too
Phil: so apparently apache2 is not the problem, but it is a problem.

Michael: grrr
Michael: hmmm – the UI isn’t completely frozen
Michael: if I move the mouse, the cursor will jump to another point on the screen after a few seconds
Michael: still, it’s quite unuseable

Phil: probably the permissions check is taking a lot of cpu time.

Michael: gonna reboot again
Michael: christ, this is annoying…lol

Phil: tell me about it.
Phil: i want my email!

Michael: lol
Michael: if all else fails, there’s always the possibility of a reinstall
Michael: which, admittedly, could suck
Michael: system install, getting MT up and running again, making sure the websites don’t break, etc. etc., yadda yadda

Phil: Do an archive & install, then.
Phil: (If you have the disk space.)

Michael: :nods definitely
Michael: i do, there’s still gigs free
Michael: not the way I was planning on spending my saturday, though

Phil: nor I.

Michael: if I do have to do that…think it’s worth putting panther on, rather than jaguar?
Michael: i’d have to figure out the new mail system (postfix instead of sendmail, right?)
Michael: hm

Phil: if only for the fact that you’d have to configure postfix, i’m gonna say no

Michael: ah
Michael: okay
Michael: yeah – “starting apache 2 web server” is part of the startup window messages
Michael: and, we’re up again
Michael: holy shit – we’re locked up again
Michael: okay, the fact that that’s getting faster does not bode well

Phil: i noticed.

Michael: goddammit
Michael: y’know, if it was cloudy, i might not mind as much, but it’s a gorgeous day out there…lol
Michael: up
Michael: according to the apache2 control panel, it’s not running
Michael: even though the startup message was in the startup routine

Phil: ridiculous.

Michael: fuck – locked up
Michael: well, locking up
Michael: in the process
Michael: tried to load the sharing control panel
Michael: spinning rainbow cursor of death

Phil: this is bloody odd.
Phil: something has gone horribly wrong between yesterday afternoon and today.
Phil: i haven’t been around to do anything.

Michael: and i haven’t touched it

Phil: when it starts up, go to the apple menu, check about this mac, and see if anything on the amount of RAM or CPU speed looks unusual.

Michael: up
Michael: 640Mb ram…trying to remember if that’s right

Phil: yes.

Michael: yeah, that’s right

Phil: maxed out for this architecture

Michael: lol
Michael: brainless
Michael: hm
Michael: console log has some conflicts listed

Phil: do tell.

Michael: login window could not find image named ‘bang’

Phil: ….?

Michael: :shrugs
Michael: some startup items failed to launch due to conflicts
Michael: dammit…do I have ichat on that machine? lol

Phil: probably.

Michael: fuck, not that it matters
Michael: i’m losing the UI again
Michael: it just keeps slogging down, slower and slower
Michael: until it doesn’t respond

Phil: i noticed…. so weird.
Phil: incidentally, the apache2 item should now start apache

Michael: lol okay
Michael: it’s working, it’s just responding like XP installed on a 286
Michael: making glaciers look positively snappy, in other words
Michael: i don’t get it
Michael: okay – restarting it, but i’ve unplugged it from the network
Michael: going to see if that makes a difference at all (though I’m not sure why it would)

Phil: we’ll find out.
Phil: if that does it, you’re getting DOS’ed.

Michael: not thinking it’s a DOS or a hack or anything, simply because it’s behind my firewall, so huge amounts of traffic on my line should affect my connectivity/speed on this ‘puter, too

Phil: not if they specifically attacked the webserver by IP address or name.
Phil: well, some slowness, maybe.
Phil: but the webserver would see the majority of it.
Phil: …your windows box isn’t on the network, is it?

Michael: nope
Michael: well, yes, but it’s off
Michael: and on the few times I start it up, the first thing I do is apply any recent security updates
Michael: it’s as up to date as it can be without doing a daily security update check
Michael: okay, this isn’t good

Phil: eh, if it’s off, it doesn’t concern us.
Phil: what?

Michael: the box doesn’t seem to be restarting

Phil: …

Michael: i’m going to unplug it and let it sit for a few minutes

Phil: well, that’s not good.

Michael: given that this started happening when neither of us were doing anything on the box, and the fact that it seems to be a gradual thing – works fine for a bit, then gradually gets slower – and that it seems to be happening sooner on each reboot, and that it doesn’t want to reboot now…
Michael: i’m really starting to worry that it’s a hardware issue

Phil: that’s not good.

Michael: which, realistically, is a possibility – this little G3 was used when I got it, and it’s been running as a server 24/7 for, oh, probably around four or five years now
Michael: the three years since i’ve been in seattle, plus a year or two in anchorage
Michael: it would suck if that’s the case, though
Michael: i don’t have the funds for a replacement
Michael: and i could move things onto the G5, but i’ve liked having a server separate from my work machine

Phil: Yeah, I can definitely understand that… I was gonna ask about that.

Michael: it’s an option, though, should the g3 not come back

Phil: Do you still have the hardware diagnostic CD somewhere for the g3?

Michael: i don’t think I ever had one

Phil: must be a new thing.

Michael: :nods
Michael: either that, or I just didn’t get it with the machine

Phil: well, we have an hour and twelve minutes to figure something out.

Michael: 1:12? lol

Phil: I’m going out to the Irish festival at that point.

Michael: aah
Michael: yeah, I want to get out of the house at some point
Michael: shame to waste a perfectly good kilt day

Phil: amen. if I had a utilikilt i’d wear it today.

Michael: you should do it, man

Michael: not that you’d have it today, but still

Phil: yeah, i know. well, hey, my birthday’s coming up in a few months… we’ll see

Michael: excellent
Michael: okay, booting

Phil: OK, it freezes up, you need to restart in single-user mode and run fsck to see if there are disk errors.
Phil: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2004011205473937&query=fsck

Michael: and I do that…how, again? lol

Phil: click the link

Michael: I did
Michael: The specific sequence of how to do this varies depending on what version of OS X you’re running. Go to Apple Support for specific instuctions.

Phil: it’s still detached from the network, right?

Michael: yeah

Phil: OK, let me find something that doesn’t suck i just noticed “check/fix the filesystem”

Michael: lol

Phil: i think you need to hold down S while booting.

Michael: gaaa…doesn’t seem to be booting
Michael: got the startup chime, nothing else

Phil: oh, maaaaan. that’s not good.
Phil: actually, though.
Phil: that might be a sign of a disk error caused by the forced reboots.
Phil: we had the exact same thing happen with a G4 at work.

Michael: :nods it got in last time, and I did a manual (correct) restart

Phil: iMovie froze, the finder crashed and wouldn’t restart, and everything rainbowed.
Phil: I’m going to suggest an archive and install.

Michael: :nods that’s what i’m thinking (grr)
Michael: i’ll deal with that later, though

Phil: just remember to hold down C as you turn it on with the jaguar disk in the driver (or panther; if you want, i can look up postfix guides while you wait)
Phil: k

Michael: right now…i’m a little annoyed, hungry, and want outside lol
Michael: i may do panther…it’s got enough under-the-hood upgrades that it might be a good idea
Michael: just take a little poking around to get postfix up

Phil: and really, from what i recall, setting up postfix wasn’t hard at all.
Phil: i did it at WWDC the day i installed panther.

Michael: as long as the websites survive, i’ll be satisfied

Phil: i think the config files made more sense to human beings

Michael: that’s my big worry, really
Michael: i’d hate to end up nuking everyone’s sites (again)

Phil: i do too. y’know, if all else fails, stick the HD into the G5. I assume it has an expansion slot for a second HD.

Michael: yeah, but I can’t just drop the drive in
Michael: different drive specs
Michael: serial ATA on the G5

Phil: oh, fuck, that’s right. dammit.

Michael: i’d need to drop the old drive(s) into ATA cases

Phil: if nothing else, even if the machine won’t boot, our data is still there.

Michael: yeah

Phil: you’re good, webmaster. go get food and sunshine; i’ll be doing the same myself shortly.

Michael: fuck – and i’m using michaelhanscom.com for most of my e-mail right now, too…lol
Michael: argh
Michael: ah, well
Michael: it’ll wait for a day
Michael: or a few hours, or whatever
Michael: anyway…i’m wandering – enjoy the irishfest

Phil: will do. later man

Update: Everything’s back up again. Phil tracked it down to a cron job that had piled a few thousand e-mail messages into his inbox, which caused everything to choke. Inbox is empty, cron is smacked back into submission, and all’s well that ends well.

iTunes: “Three Wishes” by Waters, Roger from the album Amused to Death (1992, 6:50).

KMFDM at the Fenix Underground

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Just got back from tonight’s KMFDM show. Very good, and very loud (but then, this is KMFDM we’re talking about).

I skipped out on the two opening acts — I’d been given a free CD from the first act, Charlie Drown, a while ago at a Pigface show and wasn’t terribly impressed; and whoever the middle act was simply made a lot of noise. I poked my head in from time to time, but decided to just stay downstairs.

When I headed upstairs to find a spot to watch the show, I ran into Ron again, along with Angel, a friend of his, and spent the rest of the evening hanging out with them. We worked our way into a spot underneath a staircase that had a fairly good view of the stage, and chatted while waiting for the show to start.

WWIII (off the album of the same name) and Blackball opened the show, and Sascha and company were in fine form. Unfortunately, as I was afraid of last week, I’m no great fan of the Fenix for a show like this. While it worked decently enough for a smaller show, there were just too many people this time, and it quickly got far too crowded and hot, and the three of us bailed to stand outside the bar about halfway through the show. We could still hear everything fairly well, though, so we didn’t feel like we were really missing much of anything.

We did wander in to catch the encores, though, and the night closed out with Godlike — very, very nice.

All in all a good night, though I’m no great fan of the Fenix as a concert venue. I still wouldn’t mind going again at some point on just a standard club night to see how it fares, so I’m not entirely writing it off — I’m just going to reserve concerts there for shows that I really don’t want to miss out on.

iTunes: “Dogma” by K.M.F.D.M. from the album XTORT (1996, 4:06).

Websurfers urged to avoid using IE

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Wow — another big reason to move to a better browser:

Users are being told to avoid using Internet Explorer until Microsoft patches a serious security hole in it.

The loophole is being exploited to open a backdoor on a PC that could let criminals take control of a machine.

The threat of infection is so high because the code created to exploit the loophole has somehow been placed on many popular websites.

Experts say the list of compromised sites involves banks, auction and price comparison firms and is growing fast.

Sounds pretty nasty to me.

iTunes: “Voices” by Bedrock from the album Essential Chillout (2000, 9:09).

Going down

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A plane is about to crash. There are five passengers on board, but there are only four parachutes.

The first passenger says: “I am Ronaldo, the best football player in the world. The football world needs me, and I cannot die on my fans.”

He grabs the first parachute and jumps out of the plane.

The second passenger, Hillary Clinton, says: “I am the wife of the former president of the United States; I am the senator of New York and I have a good chance of being president of the United States in the future.”

She grabs a parachute and jumps off the plane.

The third passenger, George W. Bush, says: “I am the president of the United States of America. I have huge responsibilities in the world. Besides, I am the smartest president in the history of my country and can’t shun the responsibility to my people by dying.”

He grabs a pack and jumps off the plane.

The fourth passenger, the Pope, says to the fifth passenger, a young school boy: “I am old. I have lived my life as a good person and as a priest should and so I shall leave the last parachute to you; you have the rest of your life ahead of you.”

To this the little boy says: “Don’t fret old man. There is a parachute for each of us! The smartest president of America took my schoolbag.”

(via Len)

That’s a big basement, and a lot of dust

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The Browning pistol that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand and sparked the crisis leading to World War I has been discovered gathering dust in a Jesuit community house in Austria.

Interesting enough in itself, but what really caught my eye was the headline that FARK used when they linked to this story. It’s apparently been edited to add some much needed clarification, but the version that showed up in my news aggregator this morning was as follows:

Pistol responsible for deaths of 8.5 million people found gathering dust in Jesuit community house in Austria

I actually had to read this three times before I could parse the sentence the way it was actually intended. I kept reading it and picturing a house with a basement big enough to hold the 8.5 million dusty corpses that had just been discovered.

iTunes: “Lessons In Love” by Lords of Acid from the album Lust (1991, 4:21).

Voices of the Beat: Burroughs, Ginsberg, and more…

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The Naropa Institute has just released a large number of recordings of lectures and classes to the Internet Archive. Included are recordings of William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and many, many more beat-era poets, writers, and personalities. Incredibly cool. Right now, I’m downloading a 1980 William S. Burroughs lecture on public discourse.

A lecture by William S. Burroughs on public discourse, with an introduction by Allen Ginsberg. Topics included are nuclear weapons, disarmament, the Equal Rights Amendment, aliens, dreams, function of the artist, mind-altering drugs, reincarnation, space travel, television, and economics. Keywords: beat generation, literature and the state, technology and literature, literature and society, protest literature

(via MeFi)

iTunes: “Empire Strikes Back (Medley)” by Meco from the album Best of Meco, The (1980, 4:05).

Seattle Storm Lauren Jackson in the buff

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See what I get for not paying attention to sports? I almost entirely missed hearing about the latest overblown controversy involving an adult choosing to pose naked for a magazine being sold to adults (though not an “adult magazine”, i.e., porn).

From her statements in this Seattle Times article, I think that Seattle Storm team member Lauren Jackson has exactly the right attitude about her photo shoot.

Storm star Lauren Jackson, after being asked in 2000 and again in 2002, finally agreed to bare all for an artistic Australian photo magazine called Black+White. Jackson appears on the cover, with the title “The Athens Dream,” in tribute to the upcoming Summer Games in Greece. Wisps of Jackson’s bleached-blond hair dangle over her creamy skin. Inside the magazine, Jackson, 23, reveals everything except her, ahem, down under.

[…]

“Do you really think it’s that big a deal?” she pondered when asked about the nude pics after practice yesterday.

[…]

Feeling too young at 18 to participate in 2000 and too busy with her Storm season during the 2002 shoot, Jackson mulled over the idea for this year’s magazine with her family in the offseason.

She wasn’t paid to pose, but she was flown to Sydney to work with award-winning photographer Steve Lowe and a makeup artist in a private session that took about seven hours. Jackson handpicked her pictures, getting complete control over the process.

After the Olympics, all the photos used in the magazine will be auctioned to benefit charities.

“I feel really comfortable with my body and shape I’m in, and I know I’m not going to be like this forever,” Jackson said. “I was really nervous at first, but it was conquering one of my fears. I felt very much empowered at the end.

“It’s me all over and I’m really happy with the photos. As athletes you work so hard to get in shape for competition. This celebrates the athletic body and how much work you put in. We do it the right way; we don’t starve ourselves.”

Jackson said she doesn’t view the shots as objectifying women, either. Especially because the magazine, which will sell for $40, is equal parts men and women.

[…]

“I really did it with the Australians in mind,” Jackson said. “It’s a prestigious thing in Australia. Believe it or not, but my mom and dad (Maree and Gary) loved it. My dad saw it the other day, called me and said he was so proud of me.”

Jackson’s teammates share the sentiment. Bird loved Jackson’s hair, and fellow Australian Tully Bevilaqua adored the cover shot.

“She looks sensational,” Bevilaqua said. “The human body is nothing to be ashamed of.”

Damn skippy.

I just may have to do some shopping before work tomorrow.

Purely for research purposes, of course.

Buffy and Angel?

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Some questions for Buffy/Angel fans…

Never having seen any of the show before now, I’ve been slowly working my way through the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series, renting the DVDs one by one from NetFlix. At the moment I’m about 2/3 of the way through Season Three and just found out while bouncing around old episode reviews that I’m coming up on the spinoff point for Angel’s series.

Firstly: is Angel as good of a series as I’m finding Buffy to be? Should I start working my way through this series also?

Next, assuming that the answer to that question is a “yes”, my question is simply how best to proceed. Given that there were four years of overlap between the two series, did they relate to each other in any major ways than sharing characters? While I certainly don’t expect that the two series would be sharing events and plot lines back and forth every week, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they occasionally at least referenced each other, if not outright sharing a common story line from time to time.

I figure I’ve got two basic methods of watching both shows: continuing my run through the end of Buffy and then starting to work through Angel (jumping back four years in the timeline in the process), or alternating renting discs of Buffy and Angel in order to make an attempt at following both shows concurrently in an attempt to keep the respective timelines as close as possible.

At the moment, I’ve got all of Buffy lined up in my queue, with all of Angel (at least, the three seasons that have been released on DVD so far — I’m just hoping that by the time I make it through those three, at least one more season will have been released, if not both) queued up afterwards. If enough people think that it would be worthwhile to mix the two together, it would be easy enough for me to do so.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

(And please — no spoilers on upcoming events! As I mentioned at the beginning, I’ve never watched these shows before now, so aside from bits and pieces of information that I picked up over the years as they filtered into the popular consciousness (for example, I know that Willow comes out as a lesbian at some point, though I don’t know when, how, or with/to whom; I know that there’s a musical episode sometime towards the end of the series; and I know that Jim Morrison dies at the end (sorry…in-joke with my friends)), I’m very clueless about where things are going as the series progresses, and I’d like to keep it that way. Thanks!)

iTunes: “Sweet Soul Sister” by Cult, The from the album Sonic Temple (1989, 5:08).